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Creative

I am not fruitless anymore. Through the writing, learning and practicing of the past 6 years, I have come out the other side with more wisdom, creativity and passion than I knew was possible. I know I am not alone in this type of transformation. Everyone who enters the decade of being the age of 40 comes through it changed. I didn’t realize how much better I would feel and how much more I like myself as I move through these transitions.

This e-book represents an overview on 10 topics that I feel are essential at this time of life. This is my story, so far, meant to provide inspiration and encouragement about each of these areas for further personal exploration and maybe discussion. For I am still learning each and every day.

What am I grateful for?

Sleep, job #1

Do I say nice things to myself?

I am what I eat

Who did I connect with today?

Is perfectionism driving?

I can’t soar like an eagle if I hang around with a bunch of turkeys

Have I practised creativity today?

I hate to admit exercise improves my mood

What did I learn this week?

I hope you will join me on this important journey. I want to start a global conversation about creativity and the role it plays in our everyday lives. I think this is a critical topic. If we light this spark and start to see more of our ideas come to completion, imagine the world we can create? This transformation starts with how we feel about ourselves, the creative practices in our homes and the love and care for our relationships. We will be the change we want to see in the world. I am sure of it.

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After receiving 123 responses, the one word that is most common in the answers to this question on my survey is, depends. Some common derivatives:

depends on time

depends on the project

depends on other obligations

The next group of popular responses are to give an amount of time, but that varies from minutes to hours.

There are many people who didn’t answer this question, presumably because they didn’t feel they spent a discernible amount of time doing creative things.

My favourite answers can be best be summarized by saying that “creativity is my life“. There is no separation between time spent creatively or time spent on anything else. If I was taking the survey, I’m not sure I would have answered that way. I don’t know if I feel confident enough in saying “creativity is me, all the time”. Although I aspire to that.

Maybe ‘creativity’ will be my word for 2017. That thought brings a smile to my face!

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A couple of years ago, one of my New Years resolutions was to start meditating. Even back then, everyone seemed to be talking about the amazingly restorative powers of meditation. But how was I going to accomplish this? The first quarter is a very heavy travel season for me at work. Almost immediately after the Christmas holidays end, I am off on my first long haul flight of the year.

I found a resource through the Tim Ferris podcast. Her name is Tara Brach. I love the timber of her voice. I was calmed by her guided meditation and felt good when I was finished. I could easily commit to a 20 minute session from my hotel room. That is the only upside of travelling alone. No extra responsibilities.

Early on in my practice, one of Tara’s meditations used the following passage from Rumi. I liked this so much, I wrote it out from the podcast audio. (I didn’t realize I could just google a few of the lines and have the poem instantly).

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense. – Rumi, Sufi poet

“My guiding assumption was ‘Something is fundamentally wrong with me,’ and I struggled to control and fix what felt like a basically flawed self. I drove myself in academics, was a fervent political activist and devoted myself to a very full social life. I avoided pain (and created more) with an addiction to food and a preoccupation with achievement.”

The reason I find this so interesting is that for many years, I have had a similar guiding assumption about myself. Though, I never took the time to stop and think too much about it. I also didn’t connect the dots. My issue with eating too much of the wrong kind of food was one thing. Driving myself professionally at a very high level was another. Sacrifices I was willing to make for my job, another thing again. They were all separate and unique line items. I listed these things rather than connecting them.

Well maybe I would have come to this analysis sooner than today if I had kept up my meditation practice. Sadly I dropped it because I felt it was too much extra time on top of the 30 minutes I had set aside for training. Hmmm, that reasoning seems so weak as I write it now.

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On Mother’s Day weekend, I was alone in my own house. My husband took our 2 kids camping and I had about 48 hours to myself. For those of you that live with at least 3 other people, you know what it means to have that much time to just be. But I had a bigger agenda, other than just hanging out, doing nothing for no-one.

My plan was to conduct a solo strategy session. Goal setting, big ideas, brain storming and generally answering some questions about what was I doing with my life? Out of those days and my membership with fizzle came a 30-day challenge. What could I create in 30 days to test out if my ideas had any relevance to anyone other than me?

I had been working on an e-book for months at that point. It seemed like a good idea to just finish it and the rest of the challenge would be easy peasy. Oh the best laid plans. Turns out, writing a book, even one of only 17,000 words or so is not that easy. Add in the complexity of everything else required to bring those words to life and this challenge is proving to be, well let’s say challenging.

Not to mention that my family only went away for 2 days, months ago. We had some very busy stretches of time since then. I also have a full-time job. And lots of other interests which I didn’t want to drop completely. I can’t exactly order take out every night and eat restaurant lunches. All of this is to say, I do not have a great deal of extra time. So what was I thinking?

As with all other cases like this, it seemed like a good idea at the time. As you can probably tell, I have not given up, nor will I. I’m going to see this one through to the end. Please checkout the details of my ebook project at:

Close to half of the respondents to my survey have answered this question with “weekly”. Over 30% claim a daily practice, with the least popular answer of “monthly” coming in at an even 25%. I think this shows that even with such busy lives, we are able to carve out some time to work on creative projects.

Based on the comments, there is a group of people who don’t really distinguish creative time in their life from any other time. In other words, they associate creativity in some measure to anything and everything they do. This is a really interesting concept which I will touch on in greater depth in my upcoming book. I am starting to put myself into the “creative all the time camp”. But it has been a journey to get to that point.

As of 6:30am on the West Coast, there is 97 responses on my survey. My target was 100, which I am sure to reach. Thank-you to everyone who answered the questions, the extra comments are bits of gold, which I treasure.

I’ve been a part of survey’s like this before at my job. The task was to ask ski resort staff to comment on certain aspects of their uniform, which my company was providing for them. Well over half of the respondents took some care to write long comments about the uniform, performance and features they wish it had. The experience felt like Christmas morning, reading through the heartfelt sentiments.

This survey has been even more intimate. One person used the word vulnerable to describe the creative process. I totally agree and it makes me even more thankful that so many people would open up their private thoughts on this subject.

I look forward to more discussions in the coming weeks. Thank-you again for your participation. Happy creating!

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Question #3 from my survey; this one is super interesting. When I put up the multiple choice answers, I focused on the things I was most interested in at the moment. I was curious to see the other ways people practice a creative spirit. (Maybe I should have phrased it that way!) In any case, the comments reflect many other activities and even, “ways of being” which are self defined as creative. I love it. Just the spirit I was hoping for.

As of 8am West Coast time, the survey has 37 responses – excellent! Thank-you so much for taking part. If you have not joined in yet, please add your voice to the conversation.

If you are curious, here is the full list of additional practices so far:

music

writing

fashion

food

entertaining

gardening

jewelry making

woodworking

crafting

building

beading

pottery

blogging

business

costumes

signs

painting

parenting

relationships

health & well being

up-cycling

problem solving

poetry

scrap booking

flower arrangements

crochet

Amazing honesty in the responses, thank-you so much. I am honoured to be connected to so many creative people. Rightly so, many times it has been noted that “creativity is a way of life”. For many of us, it can’t be separated from our daily life. It is present in everything we do. I think that is pretty evident by this list.

Speaking of creative projects, enjoy these photos from a recently completed silk scarf I knitted. The pattern and yarn came from LoopsClub in Tulsa. I’m a member who receives a kit each month. Because there is always another project on it’s way, I stay focused on getting projects finished. For me this is a good incentive. Otherwise projects sit on needles for years, waiting for me to complete them.

Wow! 14 people have completed my survey – What does creativity mean to you? That is awesome, thank-you. If you have not taken the opportunity yet, please add your voice to the conversation! I am learning so much about what the creative experience feels like on a personal level.

When I was thinking of the questions for the survey, it was tricky to generate ideas which would prompt meaningful answers. Everyone is so different and lived experiences would likely run a full spectrum of possible responses. Yet, there seems to be some patterns developing which I had not thought of in my original assumptions. Interesting stuff. When my survey is complete, I’ll post the aggregate graphs so everyone can see the clusters.

The second question of the survey relates to how important creativity is. I think that even if there are differing opinions about what creativity means or what kinds of activities should be deemed creative, everyone seems to have a sense of it’s importance. In my answer choice for “important” I included the bit about “balance”. For me, the really creative things I want to do, must be balanced against a whole bunch of stuff I have to do. For example, cooking a new recipe at dinner is somewhat creative, but all the old favourites and the dishes are not so creative. Not to mention all the grocery shopping and recipe research which had to be done ahead of making dinner.

Maybe creativity will have greater importance in everyday situations if we place more value on it? Shelley Berc wrote a good piece entitled, “Creativity in everyday life“, on her blog called, “The Creativity Workshop”. I’d never given much thought to adding creativity into my everyday tasks, simply through perspective. It is worth a try.

I’ve always thought it was important to have a space in order to “be” creative. This was a priority for me, long before computers came on the scene. So I still keep a space, is only a desk for now. Maybe one day it will be a whole room again. But for now, even my desk is hard to claim as my own. I often end up on the couch or in my bedroom. Good thing I need very few supplies for writing!